Champions Showdown 2016: Anand and Topalov lead

11/13/2016 – While Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin play for the World Title in New York, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Vishy Anand and Veselin Topalov show their skills in classical, rapid and blitz chess in the 2016 Champions Showdown in St. Louis. Two days of play are left, Anand and Topalov lead. An illustrated report.

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Champions Showdown 2016: Anand and Topalov lead after the classical games

A preview of the tournament and its format

Round Robin 02 — Round Two

With 2.5/4 Vishy Anand began day three in the first place. Veselin Topalov had bamboozled Caruana in the first round with a fine, intuitive sacrifice, but then had blundered against Nakamura in round three - after four rounds he had 2.0/4. With one win, one loss and two draws Hikaru Nakamura also had 2.0/4. Fabiano Caruana was yet to win.

Results Round Robin 02 - Round Two:

White

Result

Black

Nakamura, Hikaru

1 - 0

Caruana, Fabiano

Anand, Viswanathan

½ - ½

Topalov, Veselin

Things became worse for Caruana in the second round of the second round robin.

In the first round robin Topalov defeated Caruana and only lost to Nakamura. In the second round robin things went differently: Nakamura beat Caruana but lost to Topalov!

A lot of chess fans were glad when Magnus Carlsen did not try the Berlinagainst Sergey Karjakin in round two of their match in New York.But in St. Louis Nakamura tried against Topalov! And an interesting game developed...

Anand drew both of his games on day three to finish the classical leg of the multi-formattournament with 3.5/6. He now leads together with Topalov who also has 3.5/6.

Standings:

Rank

Name

Rating

Classical

Rapid

Blitz

Total Score

1-2

GM Viswanathan Anand

2779

3½/6

-

-

3½

1-2

GM Veselin Topalov

2760

3½/6

-

-

3½

3

GM Hikaru Nakamura

2779

3/6

-

-

3

4

GM Fabiano Caruana

2823

2/6

-

-

2

Games

There are many good reasons to watch the broadcast of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis. One is is the sheer quality of it.

Guest commentator for the third day of play was Garry Kasparovwho joined Tania Sachdev, Yasser Seirawan, and Alejandro Ramirez to entertain the viewers.

An added feature to this tournament is that anyone can make a phone call to the commentators and ask questions that they have. It gives you a unique opportunity to speak to great chess players and ask them questions about chess which have always been on your mind. The live commentary can be followed here and the phone number to call is 314-361-5465. The live broadcast begins at 1 p.m. local time in Saint Louis.

Go to 01:25:10 if you want to jump directly to the point when Kasparov joins the commentators!

In this 2-min video, Nakamura talks about his recent blitz match with Carlsen

A 1-min clip in which Alejandro Ramirez asks Caruana a number of quick questions.

Priyadarshan BanjanPriyadarshan Banjan is a 23-year-old club player from India. He works as an editor for ChessBase News and ChessBase India. He is a chess fanatic and an avid fan of Vishy Anand. He also maintains a blog on a variety of topics.

See also

2/23/2017 – There's going to be an extraordinary event in July in Saint Louis: eight American players will face some of the best juniors from around the world – four players under 17, two boys under 14 and two girls under 14 years old. "An extra-ordinary opportunity for the best juniors, both Americans and World, to test their skills and fighting spirit in a prestigious event," said GM Efstratios Grivas, who will be one of the trainers selecting the World Delegation.

See also

11/14/2016 – Day four of the Champions Showdown in Saint Louis brought the rapid tournament. The shortened time-control led to excitement and oversights: Viswanathan Anand, for example, tried a faulty combination against Hikaru Nakamura and succeeded because the American failed to find the refutation. After winning twice against Topalov in the rapid Anand now leads the overall standings. Studio guest Garry Kasparov was at his nostalgic best as he commentated the games. Illustrated report.

Video

Former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik liked to play the French and once described it as a 'difficult and dangerous opening'. But in this 60 minutes video IM Andrew Martin suggests an aggressive and little-used idea of the renowned attacking player GM Viktor Kupreichik to counter the French: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Be3!?. Andrew Martin uses the games of Kupreichik to show why this line could catch many French aficionados unprepared and is very dangerous for Black. Attacking players will love this line and the unusual complications that it promotes.

(i) "They" are not represented in the WCC by players.
(ii) For compensatition they run an alternative tournament, with two guest dinosaurs (Anand and Topalov) and "the" two US stars. Leading are the (non US) dinos.

thlai80 11/14/2016 12:48

@fons, and Kasparov shows up at the world championship in the 2nd game. So who's point falls flat??

fons 11/13/2016 08:02

Aighearach: Kasparov is a very harsh critic of the people who currently run FIDE. (Rightly so.) Kasparov is not going to help FIDE promote their events if he can avoid it. So you might as well see this as a political statement. In any case your argument falls flat I'm afraid.

Aighearach 11/13/2016 07:39

Great to see Kasparov show up, that certainly shut up the people who felt offended that the event was even happening! I guess it is allowed for Americans to have a tournament at the same time as the WCC after all, same as everybody else. ;)

Surely if this was some great insult the game, Kasparov would be able to tell!